The present invention relates to an optical fiber contact for terminating an optical fiber and methods of terminating optical fibers.
Numerous methods have been proposed in the prior art for terminating optical fibers to fiber contacts and interconnecting such contacts. In severe environments where a relatively wide temperature range can be expected, such as in aerospace, geophysical, industrial, and marine applications, it has been common to mix two liquids together in the field to form a liquid epoxy which is then used to terminate an optical fiber to a fiber contact, the contact then being mechanically assembled with additional hardware to form a connector. This termination method is disadvantageous since it is messy, very craft sensitive, and time consuming. In addition, such fiber contacts tend to be intricate in design in that they include the connector hardware and therefore are unduly large which makes them hard to use since they are substantially larger in cross-section than the fiber cable.
Prior art contacts suffer from a further disadvantage in that they are oftentimes required to be formed to precise longitudinal lengths to insure that an optical fiber terminated therewith will be disposed a pre-controlled distance from an optical source when connected thereto. A further disadvantage of prior art optical fiber contacts is that oftentimes the user is required to cleave an end of the optical fiber at a position flush with an end of the contact, and then subsequently polish the cleaved optical fiber end, which operations are very craft sensitive and time consuming. Finally, prior art contacts have relatively short shelf lives.